Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy. Fans of "Written in the Stars" by Aisha Saeed would enjoy this memoir. Based on the title, I was expecting a fantasy novel, but I still thought the memoir was a good story. Readers should be forewarned of the abuse and forced marriage topics. While not a religious novel, I was happy to see the author's connection to faith and struggle with sin and desire, and I liked the theme of one's connection to God will prevail. The contrast between culture and religion could be a little stronger. While I won't necessarily recommend this for our school library, I will recommend it to mental health counselors in our community who have clients that suffer from PTSD and the type of family abuse issues shown here.

(3.5 stars)
"I am a Muslim woman, also a racialized, cisgender settler who emigrated from Dhaka, Bangladesh at the age of six to this sacred Indigenous land, now known blanketly as Canada." I wondered as I read the introduction to the Shaytan Bride whether it was going to be my kind of book. I wasn't really up for another lecture on privilege and colonial impacts, but I'll give it to Sumaiya Matin, she weaves these important ideas into the narrative of her life story seamlessly.

It is of course impossible to talk about the Indian diaspora without reference to the strange colonial idea of partitioning groups of Subcontinental dwellers along religious lines and assuming it would go well. This book does a good job of humanising the complexities of gender-based violence, the impacts of Islamophobia, and the residue of colonisation on one woman's life. Through the process of immigration, Sumaiya reassesses her place in the world, her desires, her faith and her relationship to family. It's as much a story of migration as it is of forced arranged marriage.

"They ignored the consequences their desires would have on their bodies, their families, and their religion. This audacity or carelessness was so preposterous that the only explanation was meddling from an outside force [jinni] that had somehow found its way in." Women's desire is a key theme of the memoir, and it has some interesting juxtapositions between the way Canadians view women and Bangladeshi people view them, as Sumaiya struggles with her own desires and how they sit at odds with "the warm quilt of family" and faith. Interestingly, Sumaiya manages to separate out what her faith requires and the behaviours of those who kidnap and confine her. She also makes a compelling case for honour killings simply being a culturally specific version of domestic violence that exists in many cultures, pointing out: "men in North America could also kill because they felt their honour was at stake."

In the latter part of the book, I found the author's writing about the process of writing the memoir a bit strange and self-indulgent. Including emails and long swathes of terribly expressed text messages felt like a need to provide proof rather than letting her story stand on its own. It detracted from the story-telling voice I had come to really enjoy, and is the reason I've scored The Shaytan Bride fewer than five stars. I think this memoir would be more cohesive if it were told in the one voice, because at times that voice is quite lovely: "I studied his skin, the hue of Jaisalmer sand, the muscles on his arm like the ranges of India, and the space between his shoulder blades the width of the Ganga river."

This is a horrible story, but I mean that in a good way. To know that Muslim women are treated badly is one thing, but to have it slapped in your face repeatedly as this story does, is a shattering experience.

Sumaiya Matin moved with her family from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Thunder Bay, Ontario as a young child, and effectively grew-up Candian, but still Muslim of course. Her family ties ran deep though, and when she returns on what she thinks is merely a visit, she has no idea that her family plans to marry her off while she's back in Bangladesh.

In Canada, she'd met and fallen in love with a Sikh guy, but this was not her family's plan for her, and neither she nor Bhav, the guy she fell for, knew how their relationship might work. They knew only that they wanted it to. Trapped in Bangladesh, cut-off from friends, denied access to a phone, Sumaiya had to struggle against everyone to ensure that it was she, not they, who determined what her future would be. She proved to be stronger than they, but strong as she is,mstill she could not make everything come out all right. The story was educational, uncomfortable but necessary to read, and in many ways depressing.

In a similar vein, it was not all plain sailing for me, as a reader. I am not religious, so my mind is often boggled at what believers believe and what they bring upon themselves. I was unaware of how deep the fantastical beliefs of some cultures still run, even now in the 21st century. The stories of the Shayṭān Bride and the deep-seated beliefs in jinn were disturbing. It turns out that two-thirds to three-quarters of Bangladeshis believe in these spirits and in possession by such spirits, and women tend to believe more than men.

The story of the woman possessed by one such spirit was disturbing. I don't believe she was. It was doubtlessly a medical condition, but the story was quite moving and unsettling. There are also female jinn named jiniri, which I can no doubt have fun with in some future story I write!

In conclusion, This is a heart-breaking story of female subjugation, cruelty, and strength, of love and loss, and of one woman determined to be the author of her own destiny, and for that, I commend it.